I find it odd to see this, because I was just telling Pixie last night that our son will have no concept of that if you missed your TV show, you had to wait the next day to see it. If you needed to look something up, and you didn't have an encyclopedia at home, you had to hike to the library.
Personally, I remember calculators that were only red LEDs. Our first VCR that had a remote...that wasn't even wireless. My first game system wasn't even an Atari: it was a Pong system...Telestar, I believe (I still have it in my basement in a box). When you went to 7-Eleven, not only were they not 24 hrs, but if you got a slurpee (only cherry or coke flavors - no mixing), they made it behind the counter for you. There wasn't a CVS or Walgreens - there was a local drug store and the pharmacist knew us by name.
Only a few people had cable. And all it did was descramble what the local channel (for us, it was channel 20) started playing at 8pm. It was called "OnTV." (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ON-TV - kind of an interesting read.) I saw Star Wars at a friends house, and they didn't Pan and Scan; they just shrunk the ratio down so Darth Vader looked 10 feet tall and 150 lbs. Later, when you had cable service as we know it today, there was only one company in the neighbourhood, which was awesome for my friends and me. I came up with the idea of taking our friend's cab;e remote, going out at 2 or 3am and going up to people's living room windows and, using the universal remote that the cable company gave to everyone, turning people's TVs on and maxing out the volume (you had to angle it just right through the glass if their curtains were open).
Not as long ago, but I miss the days of prank calling. Now, with everyone having caller ID and screening, it has really taken the fun out of it. Kids will never have the chance like I did to really perfect this art.
I could go on and on, because I think the last twenty years have just been fascinating in this regard.
Of course, I remember staring at Suzanne Sommer's bouncy boobs and hard nipples on
Three's Company and not knowing why I liked it so much...but I watched every week, and if Joyce DeWitt's nips were hard too - that was a good night of TV watching in my book.
I probably should have kept that last one to myself...